YMMV / The Stories of Sodor

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • In canon, Geoffrey is an imaginary engine made up by Thomas to get out of trouble. This, of course, invited many, many fan interpretations. Victor's interpretation of Geoffrey depicts him as a smug rival to The Flying Scotsman who is willing to commit industrial espionage against the LNER. After serving time, he makes a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Arthur is depicted as a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk, his spotless record making him this way. This, unfortunately, leads to him racing at criminally-dangerous speeds when he is late one winter evening, and crashing at the bottom of Gordon's Hill (or as it was known at the time, the Preston Incline), costing him his life, as well as the lives of his crew and passengers. 20 years later, he returned as a ghost resembling the infamous Timothy the Ghost Engine. And in 1943, another engine of Arthur's class with the exact same name was built, who is closer to Arthur's canon depiction as a soft-spoken Nice Guy.
  • Lady is an entirely different engine. For one thing, her nameplates only say Lady in commemoration of her previous owners' late wife, her real name being Kate. In addition, she has a completely different livery, and is a custom industrial shunter rather than a magic engine. Just about the only things about her that haven't changed are her face, shape, and Ship Tease with Thomas.
  • In The Railway Series, Stanley was an incredibly rude American hick who always rode roughly and never cared if he crashed; he ends up becoming a generator for his troubles. Victor's interpretation is completely different. For one thing, Stanley has a slight Irish accent, and is also very friendly. His accidents, meanwhile, are not because of rough riding, but because of his jinx, something that changes when a mysterious lamp that had foiled two German spies and their British collaborator from destroying a line of fuel tankers at Knapford Harbor, is passed along to the Mid-Sodor Railway. And when Andreas (an original character by WildNorWester) makes a comment about turning Stanley into a generator, he gets chewed out by Duke and Stuart for it. Also, as revealed in "Inspection", he served with Sir Topham Hatt on the Western Front in World War I.
  • Alfred, AKA 98462, is not an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight, but is instead just a pompous express engine who commits a Heroic Sacrifice during World War II.
  • Whiff is a government-owned engine sent to Sodor to assist in various construction projects in the 1910s, before becoming the station pilot for Barrow-In-Furness.
  • Cuthbert was an original character who had no pre-defined personality when released on Sodor Workshops, and therefore is a blank slate. In this series, the name Cuthbert is an assumed identity, his real identity being this universe's version of Johnny Cuba.
  • Bill and Ben's pranking only goes as far as scaring people and engines with their whistles. Ben outright states they know their limits. Contrast this to canon, where Bill and Ben play practical jokes with little to no heed to the consequences until it's too late.
  • Murdoch is a boastful engine who gloats about his superiority to the older engines. He does get better though.
  • Victor’s take on Diesel 10 is vastly different from canon. Firstly, he now goes by the name Joshua. Secondly, while he was the main villain of the TV show, here at worst, Joshua is merely boastful. Finally, Joshua no longer has Pinchy.
• Broken Base: Season 5's reception was... mixed, to say the least. On the one hand, many people praised the Whodunnit story that ties the season together, focus on several characters that are usually sidelined and several interesting new ones, along with Victor's willingness to kill off more than a few beloved characters to add to the tension and drama. On the other, the extremely short episode run times, overuse of montages absent dialogue, and several of the deaths coming off as lazy shock value left others feeling disappointed.
• Fridge Logic: Was the coach of German POWs that Adam pushed into the sea really on Peter’s train by accident or did Peter find the perfect excuse to get rid of potential witnesses of him blowing up a German hospital?
• Funny Moments: When.. "GUYS!" Oh good Lord. Percy don't do that! You'll give the tropers a heart attack. "THUD" You see?
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In "Aftermath," Edward tells Adam that he deserves to be in Nuremberg for what he did. The 1945-55 synopsis says that one of the engines stood trial for war crimes, albeit it was actually Peter who would stand on trial, and the next episode after that, "Extension", reveals that Adam faced no charges because the prisoners he drowned were vile humans who partook in the Holocaust, and the UN declared his actions a "global service".
  • In "Parade" Tom Tucker makes a remark that, "despite their age, Lily, Colin, and Adam will be around for a good long time." "Blitz," "Atrocity," and "Diagnosis" proved him wrong.
  • "Modernisation" has Geoffrey get into a nasty accident that puts him into the works for a month. Then he gets into another crash in "Vandalism" that kills him.
  • In "Diagnosis" Mr. Zorro is revealed to have beaten his cancer. Then in "Revenge" he’s gunned down by one of the Hall children. Bruce put it best:
  Bruce: The man survived the western front, he survived the Blitz, he survived bloody cancer, only to be gunned down by some mongrel!
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Knowing that Henry and Emily are married makes Lily's sacrifice a lot more heroic and meaningful because if she didn't it means Henry would have died and Emily never would have gotten to see her husband again or properly say goodbye.
• Memetic Mutation: "Fuck Germany, and every damn person who lives there!"
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Dominic (this series’ version of the Spiteful Breakvan) was merely a bully before he was accidentally destroyed. However, when he comes back as a ghost, he kills a guard (who was going to be a father, no less), subjects another guard to a brutal Mind Rape (he was due to get married) and indirectly caused Peter to be seriously damaged. A spiteful breakvan indeed.
  • Shaun Creedy. Having lost his father to a railway disaster and his mother was Driven to Suicide due to their home being seized (as the LMS was unable to pay them due to embezzlement), Shaun decides to carry out a series of incidents that would in the end, kill dozens of people and multiple engines, including Geoffery, Mickey, and even Thomas himself.
• Narm: While the Stories of War section are generally handled well enough in terms of the gravity of the situation, the Special Effects Failure sometimes does end up making some parts of these stories look cheap and can result in otherwise tense situations come off as goofy. A prime example being the use of green screened airplanes that look two-dimensional in a 3D environment.
  • The sub-series itself to some. A serious drama about the Second World War, starring talking trains.
  • Geoffrey's death in "Vandalism"; many viewers were utterly flabbergasted that what appeared to be a relatively survivable accident was in fact a fatality that unceremoniously disposed of a character that had been around since Season 1, coming off more as a clumsy attempt at shock value than a fitting end to a well-liked character.
  • What should be a dramatic reveal in "Aftermath", that Adam killed Radek's brother when he dumped the coach of POWs into the harbor, is utterly ruined by the sudden use of the infamous and comical surprise chord of Thomas and Friends fame, destroying the previously tense mood completely.
• Nothing Is Scarier: What did that poor woman see inside Arthur's coaches?
  • What did Dominic show that one guard that resulted him to be institutionalized?
    • The most-commonly accepted fan theories are either Hell itself, or a preview of the coming war.
  • What the hell did Edward and Adam see inside Shed 17 at the concentration camp?
    • Considering that the sign was German for Shed 17, we're probably better off not knowing.
• Tearjerker: Has its own page.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Adam after the miniseries. He gets a lot of flak from the other engines for technically committing murder by shunting a coach full of Nazis into the sea, but as someone commented, Adam had lost Lily and Colin, i.e his siblings in the W&S, to the Nazis. The sympathy gets cranked up when Adam finds out that not all of the coach occupants were soldiers. But it turns out all right in the end, since "Closure" reveals that the coach's occupants were criminals who had a hand in the Holocaust, and investigators declared Adam's actions a "global service".
  • Peter, Jesus.
  • Halifax in "Enthusiasts"; while he was a generally unlikable nuisance and only caused trouble, his actions weren't malicious, and his death was due to a combination of poor choices and awful timing on the part of others.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Mr. Starr in "Thief". His reasons for not believing Thomas are rather flimsy, however true.
  • Toby in "Strike". However valid his points may be, he wasn’t constantly being hounded by the Midis, not to mention that ignoring continuous mockery is easier said than done.
  • Joey and Mickey are doing their jobs but despite that, there are some instances where they cross a line while doing it.
    • "Fire" for instance, sees Mickey calling out Thomas for recklessly charging into a burning shed to save a workman. Granted, he's right that it was reckless, but the way he says it makes it sound like Thomas should've let the workman die.
    • "Thief" has Joey arrest Wendell for stealing goods for the Horrid Lorries. He admits that Wendell's cause (to save William) was somewhat justifiable, but he asserts that he and the police would've set up a rescue operation to save William while pointing out that Thomas, Lily, and Wendell had sustained injuries from taking matters into their own buffers. Never mind that 1) the police would've had similar injuries, and 2) the Lorries are not the kind of criminals to just "surrender" and would've used William as a shield.
  • Gordon has his moments:
    • In "Trapped," Gordon's sarcasm towards Toby's unsuccessful plan of using a battering ram comes off extremely condescending, as if someone had seen it coming (i.e himself) and his overall pessimism is really irritating.
    • His behavior towards Geoffrey in "Smuggling" onward may be justified, but he's pretty much acting like Geoffrey never had been in and never will go to Railgate.
  • Douglas in "Aftermath":
    • According to Donald he's chastising Adam for stooping to the Nazis' level one day of the week, and beating him [Douglas] to the punch the next. Add to that, he continues to lay into Adam after the engine even after he discovers the consequences of his actions. Makes one wonder if Mickey really has "worked wonders" on the platoon like Mr. Zorro said.
    • Also according to Donald, he blames Henry for Lily's death, seeing as the Nor'easter #3 had burst his safety valve while he was escaping an unexploded bomb, which Lily parked herself in front of to shield Henry from the explosion. Henry had no control over this and it could've happened to anyone. "Amends" explains exactly why: Douglas thought Lily was cheating on him with Henry.

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